I have a seat of Autocad (2007 IIRC) that I can donate. The only problem is Autodesk doesn't support the license anymore so getting a key may be an issue, but I have all of the bona fides. But it's here if anyone wants to try and put it on a PC at the HF.

I'm throwing it out there because I saw it on the list of wanted items.

it should still be possible to validate 07 off line with the original packaging, however it's a few versions before that where they made it annoying at best.

post 04 having graphics hardware that's designed for ACAD is particularly important, as you can get some *really* funky bugs, especially if you update your driver to an unsupported version.

we'll also need a seat of win XP to install it on, and a seat of excel (it's not a listed requirement, but it uses it for some backend stuff).

because of the hassle factor, and how much better ACAD performs without a lot of other stuff installed on xp along with it, i'm going to suggest that we install it on a virtual machine which we can save an image of once it's happy, and reset if something gets funny.

I dug around my office and found it last night. It's actually ADT 2005, I though I upgraded it to 2007 but I guess not. I found my case, but I can't seem to find the paperwork. I'll keep digging just in case we need to verify anything, otherwise I can make a call to the reseller.

ACAD functionality hasn't changed much over the years, they just add scripts that make it easier for the user to do something ACAD could already do, for the most part. Oh yeah, and User Interface changes and graphics bumps. ("Here's your new AutoCAD release, we didn't do anything except make it impossible for you to find any of the buttons you used to use." Good thing I always typed my commands.) But I'm sure this will do what we need it to do.

I honestly haven't used ACAD for years, not since my CAD Manager days, in any production capacity. I use, develop and support Revit now which is a better, if more frustrating, piece of software. I only use ACAD to quickly model a part or something.

07, and 10 saw big revisions in the nature of the dwg file format, and there've been a few big improvements in how certain types of curves are handled, and a number of "legacy commands" have been cut. 07 was a huge step up from 05, and 10 was.... a step... there are things i adore about post 10 acad, and things i hate. 08 is still my go to release if given my druthers, but parametric blocks are sexy.

for the non-cad monkeys out there. adt (architectural desktop) is the architectural pseudo-modeling overskin for acad, but can still be able to run in vanilla mode for more mechanical or generic drafting.

digressing, i like revit a lot, but its an entirely different tool than acad. one is a digital 3d pen and paper, and the other is (mostly) a parametric modeler. most of my frustrations with revit still come down to other users not putting things on the correct worksets, or not understanding how shared parameters work. like acad, there are things you need a project cad manager for and task that can be assigned to a draughtsman, and things you need a bim manager for and things a "tech" can pick up. as a field we've got ~30 years of workflow development in acad, and functionally 5 or fewer years in revit in terms of widespread adoption. heck there's still folks who have the ctb/stb argument.

(irl i'm an architectural cad manager/modeler working in acad 12-'12, revit 6-'12 along with an assortment of inventor releases, some rhino, 3ds max, etc etc.)

OFF TOPIC -I remember meeting you a few times at some of the CAD and Revit groups, the last one I recall was MNRUG a couple years back. And I was surprised when I bumped into you again at the early TC Maker meet-ups (pre- Hack Factory). After 14 years in Arch I moved over to MEP 2 years ago and found I enjoy it much more.

WAY OFF TOPIC - A properly developed Revit template and properly trained users makes the whole thing work well. (I'm one of two full time Revit Developers on staff.) We've steered clear of worksets (not something I particularly agree with) and done everything with filters and view templates, locked down family creation and a bunch of other stuff. I absolutely love all the parametric modeling and data. Being able to have everything in my model be automatically sized by changing a single item downstream and then report that back to my schedule is super sweet. And having well designed schedules... don't even get me started. I've been able to cut my design process down to about 25% or less what it was in ACAD. I still have my wrestling matches with Revit but more often than not I'm victorious.

I printed the list of video cards and notice that the ones I'm likely to have are listed as not Autodesk Certified nor supported or recommended. Funny, I didn't seem to have any trouble. But I probably have a GeForce or Redeon in my scrap pile if you want to try them. I'll bring what I have tomorrow anyway.

i've had no problems at all, and had things that went from fine to uselessy buggy when a user upgraded their video drivers to "help" me. i've even had the same card and drivers in different machines work or not (when not certified) the autodesk graphics backend has become a bizarre arcane art that i no longer ponder, but rely on their lists.